


Free Will Breeds Temptation

by StormingOverSeas



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Big Brother Shiro (Voltron), Bisexual Disaster Lance (Voltron), Child Abuse, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Cuba, Cuban Lance (Voltron), F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gay Keith (Voltron), Harm to Children, I'm Going to Hell, I'm Sorry, Keith as a child, Keith's father (Voltron) is Not Nice, Lance as a Child, M/M, Major Original Character(s), Mutual Pining, Rated Explicit because this is Dark, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Self-Worth Issues, Sexual Abuse, Slow Burn, Swimmer Lance (Voltron), Their Childhood is Not Okay, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Who You Will Hate
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:54:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22135873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormingOverSeas/pseuds/StormingOverSeas
Summary: Keith's father is not a kind man, with hard fists, steel eyes, and harsh words. Keith is determined to escape.The McClain family catch nine-year-old Keith Kogane stealing from their store, but they are kind and see his arrival as fate. They take the wary, broken child into their home as one of their own, thankful when he opens up to and gets along with their son, Lance.Soon enough, they hire a new babysitter.That's when everything starts to go wrong, and the Garrison becomes Keith and Lance's only escape.Then, of course, they're dragged into Space by a Robot Lion—Surely things couldn't get any worse?
Relationships: Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Keith & Shiro (Voltron), Keith (Voltron)/Original Male Character(s), Keith/Lance (Voltron), Lance & Shiro (Voltron), Lance (Voltron)/Original Male Character(s)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 71





	Free Will Breeds Temptation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cedarcries](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cedarcries/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS! Please read!
> 
> First, do not read this story if any of the triggers or tags bother you. Child abuse, sexual abuse/rape, things like that.  
> This is not a happy story, (well, the ending is happy, and later in the fic, but not right now!) things are going to get extremely dark.
> 
> Also, please do not try to sneak into the luggage hold of a plane, you probably won't survive. Keith survives because this is fanfiction and the first chapter is too early to kill one of the main characters off for even me.

**" D** irty little faggot," Keith flinched away from the glass shattering against the wall beside him, eyes wide. His father was drunk again, and in a nasty mood from the looks of it. He'd come home early, caught Keith studying with a friend from school (who he had to admit he had a slight crush on) and had freaked. He'd managed to get Jack out the door before anything majorly escalated, but now without the threat of watching eyes, he was more likely to do something worse. He swallowed thickly, trying to make himself look taller. He was nine, for fuck's sake, he shouldn't have had to prepare to be hit like this.

"Dad, please," he held up placating hands, hoping to calm him down a bit. "We're just friends, we were studying."

"Bullshit! I saw the way you were looking at him. You _wanted_ him. Don't you deny it."

The hit came faster than he expected, right across the face with stinging pain like needles. Familiar. He fell to the floor without the time to right himself, biting his lip to keep from crying out when a kick landed on his stomach. Over and over again, blow after blow, punches, kicks, stomps, anything made to _hurt._

His mouth was filled with the taste of metal, teeth cutting sharply through his lip.

It was the only visible wound on him by the time his father was done. He'd learned after the first few calls from social services to keep the injuries to areas not usually exposed, or at the very least easy to explain away. Kids fell, it was a fact of life.

Keith Kogane had had enough.

For as long as he remembered, his dick of a father had been like that. He'd come home—drunk off his ass—and knock Keith around a bit. Then, he'd go to bed, and expect his son to take care of everything around the house except groceries. He had been a good man, once, back when his mother was still alive. The people of the town would lament about how happy he used to be with her, how kind and generous, now he was a moody bastard and the town drunk; living miles out in the desert from town suddenly seeming more like a cold man than someone wanting privacy and stability with his wife.

He waited for his dad to pass out on the couch like usual, before creeping around the house—quiet as someone who had learned to fear making noise from an early age—gathering his stuff. He was leaving, fuck his father, not like he would care. He'd probably be happy, in fact.

He didn't pack much in his backpack, didn't _need_ much. He packed the few articles of clothing he had, his toothbrush and toothpaste, the only photo he had of himself as a baby, which his mother had taken soon before her death. He packed a ton of food and water, unwilling to let himself escape hell only to starve to death a few days later. Next, he slipped open his dad's wallet, the leather cool and worn beneath his hands as he worked out three hundred for himself—thankful his father was partial to cash—and then he dug into the secret store, pulling out seven hundred in crumpled bills from the storage compartment in one of their potted plants. A thousand dollars, that should be enough to get him away. He would hitchhike up to the nearest airport (roughly six towns over) and bribe one of the workers to sneak him onto the plane in the storage compartment.

Finally, he slipped the blade his mother had given him into his pocket, where it would be the easiest to draw, and Keith set out on his own.

Hood drawn over his head, shadowing his face, Keith started along the dusty streets of small-town Texas, staring at the clustered rocks and sanded ground he was walking over with tattered and worn red sneakers. His hoodie was black, which blended easily into the night and provided a break from the nightly desert chill. It still seeped in through the holes in his jeans, but he found he didn't mind too much, the sting reminded him that this was real, that he was _really_ getting away.

Cars were few and far between, let alone one willing to stop for a random hitchhiker in the middle of the night, but eventually someone stopped.

A nice, shining grey vehicle pulled up just in front of him, the window rolled down. It looked like a damn expensive car, and the man inside was wearing a suit. He smiled, looking nice enough. Usually, you hear that pedophiles drove old, rusted pickup trucks, and always gave off a creepy vibe, but Keith was smarter than most kids his age, and he knew that anyone who picked him up was potentially dangerous, no matter how presentable they looked. He would still have to be cautious.

"Hey, kid. Need a ride?" He asked, voice gruff and deeper than expected.

"I'm heading to the airport," he agreed, trying to make himself sound older by deepening his own voice to match.

The man nodded. "Great, I'm heading in that direction anyway. Hop in, I'll bring you."

"Thanks." Keith tried to force his voice to sound polite, but he was naturally a defensive person (which made a ton of sense considering his dad and secluded upbringing) and it came out sharper than he's meant. He pulled the handle, slipping into the seat next to the guy and tugging his backpack into his lap.

"You can put it in the back if you want," he said, already pulling back onto the road, "might be a little nicer on space."

Maybe he was just being polite, but then again, maybe not. "I think I'll keep it on me, you understand." The man nodded, shrugging.

"Hey, whatever floats your boat."

Thankfully, they were silent for a while, Keith staring out the window with one hand on his knife.

"So, what's a kid like you doing hitchhiking to the airport in the middle of the night?" God, conversation, gross.

But Keith didn't want to get kicked out of the car.

Fine, he'd bite.

"I live near enough to it, just figured telling a complete stranger to take me to the airport was a safer bet than just straight up giving them my address." He lied, though he had a feeling the stranger didn't believe a word of it.

"Smart," he said anyways. "So what were you doing so far from home? Nothing too bad I hope."

Keith shrugged, "studying." Not exactly a _complete_ lie, he _had_ been studying. "My friend's dad's car broke down, and my mom got caught at work. My dad lent his truck out to a friend the other night. I'd much rather go home than spend the night listening to his baby brother wail and keep me up." The rest—of course—was all complete bullshit.

He nodded. "Makes sense to me, I'm Alex by the way, and you are?"

"Jack."

_Sorry Jack, it was the only name he could think of on such short notice._

“Jack’s a nice name.”

He just nodded.

Thankfully, they both remained silent until they pulled up down the street from the airport, the car rumbled to a stop on the side of it, scattering a bit of dust.

Outside of the camera view.

The doors were locked, and Keith, grabbed at his knife, eyes hard.

Alex grabbed at his thigh.

Fuck, he’d called it.

Keith grabbed the man's wrist, turning it around in one swift movement and pressing the blade to it. Alex stilled.

“You thought I was safe,” Keith said casually, as if he wasn’t threatening the man who was about to do some pretty horrific things to him. “Runaway kid, surely I’d be too scared to tell the cops, right? You’re not supposed to pick up hitchhikers because it’s dangerous, you thought you were alright since you were dangerous too. You were _wrong_. Now, I’m going to get out of this car and leave, and if you tell the cops you even saw me I’m going to tell them what you did.”

He didn’t put his blade away until he was out of the car and it had taken off down the road. Fucking people.

The airport was bustling, and there were cameras everywhere, but Keith wasn’t all that worried. His dad wasn’t going to call the police, he wouldn’t care Keith ran. He’d be pissed about the money, but that was about it.

Now the thing about underpaid airport workers, was that it was even worse in small-town Texas, and so he could slip the people bagging the plane a couple hundred and they would let him hide in with the luggage. He knew because his friend Benny had done it earlier on in the year, and clearly it had worked, since he was still labeled a missing person. 

First, he just had to figure out which flight he wanted to catch.

Looking at the lists of flights, Keith frowned. He wanted to go somewhere warm, and the cheapest place out of country was Cuba. He’d done a project on Cuba once, they spoke Spanish there. Keith knew Spanish, he had top marks in that class. It was easy, you just repeated the words and sentences the teachers said and pretended to sing along with the songs. He wasn’t fluent or anything, but he did know a little bit. Surely he could pick up the rest when he got there, right?

Security wasn’t exactly the best, so he slipped through a few of the ‘staff-only’ doors until he ended up out on the tarmac.

He waited until a young woman appeared before he darted out from behind a stack of boxes. “Wait,” he hissed, watching her turn with wide eyes.

“Hey, you can’t be here-”

“I need your help.” She seemed to recognize the youthful tone in his voice and blinked, stepping closer so she could see his face despite the shadows of the night and his hood.

“Are you lost?”

Keith pursed his lips, then drew two-hundred dollars from his pocket, “I need you to get me onto the plane going to Cuba with all of the luggage. I’ll hide in there and sneak out once we land, _please_.”

She still looked more concerned than anything, and shook her head. Looks like she was going to need a bit more convincing than some money, probably his backstory.

He lifted up his shirt, shoving away the anxiousness and uncomfortable feeling rising within him. She looked horrified at the sight of purple and blue decorating his chest, the bruises his father had given him earlier that day. They were easily visible in the movement. “I _need_ to get away,” he said firmly. “ _Please._ ”

She glanced around, as if worried that this was some kind of test that she was going to be fired if she accepted and failed.

“Fine,” she spat out eventually, waving for Keith to follow, and took off running. Keith did as she asked and followed, both of them keeping their eyes out for others. 

Looks like not many people liked working the nightshift, because soon they stopped in front of a plane, and there were only a couple of people actually packing anything onto it. She motioned for him to stay there, before straightening her neat brown hair, and stepping into view.

She said something to the other workers (Keith couldn’t hear what), and then they were leaving—just like that!

She helped him into the belly of the plane, into the back behind some luggage, where she was sure he wouldn’t be seen, and then she gave him a soft smile.

“Good luck, Kid. When they open the plane you’ll probably have a five-minute window while everything is getting processed and approved before you can make a run for it. Just hold on tight during landing and takeoff, don’t fall asleep in case you miss it. I don’t know what you’ll do over there, but as soon as you get out, take a look for the cameras and avoid their view as best as you can, okay?”

Keith nodded, smiling, “thanks.”

“Of course, my name’s Amanda if you ever come back here and need help again.”

She handed him a blanket.

The plane was dark, and cold.

He was shivering, but thankfully the baggage area was pressurized, and the temperature was at least _somewhat_ monitored, otherwise he probably would have frozen to death. It was a risk, he knew, but it had been one he was willing to take. Death was probably better trying to escape than at the hands of his own father in a rickety old house he’d never even considered home.

Keith was good with boredom, at the very least.

He was used to being alone in the dark, liked it even, and it was even sweeter knowing he was finally getting out.

The plane was landing.

He slid slightly with the descent, eyes widening.

The already loud plane was even louder now, working overtime to prepare for it’s landing.

His ears popped, which hurt slightly, but Keith couldn’t bring himself to care over the excitement.

He was finally free, it was time to begin his new life.


End file.
